If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Hybrid View

Just removed 6 feet of tar on my car

Do not ask how, where, why. Came home and spotted tar from the back of the front wheel well to the rear bumper. The entire section from the mid door level down, as if someone took a hose and sprayed it with tar. Used a can of Dupont tar (liquid) removal, and after going through that, a spray container of Turtle Wax bug and tar removal. Two day effort--but it looks like I got it all. Waiting until tomorrow when I have a pair of fresh eyes to recheck it.
I was wondering if anyone has ever tried to go after a company or town if they know the source of the villain--which I do not. I definitely would sue for a few hundred dollars of effort--maybe more.

Regardless of how it happened I'm glad you got it

off. Chances are that someone spraying the old pavement with tar(prior to repaving) got a little careless and spayed an area where they didn't(weren't going to) pave. At night maybe...you ran over that spot. FWIW, I've had very good luck removing tar with WD-40. It's cheap and very effective.

I think you may be thinking of sealant.

I've never heard of or seen a type of tar that could be sprayed. Maybe you're thinking of sealant, but sealant is applied after the tar is put down, not prior to.

I'm thinking he just ran over new tar, be it a whole new surface or just some spot applications. Sealant dries fairly quickly and is generally not going to be applied so thick that it should spray up on a vehicle as bad as this case sounds like, even if it was sprayed only 5 mins before he ran over it.

I've done it a number of times myself, but I've never had to spend near the time it sounds like this person did removing it. He must have ran over quite a bit of it.

Nope...it's hot runny tar and it's more drizzled..

than sprayed I suppose...before the asphalt is applied. At least that's how they do it here in SE Va. There's also another process called "Slurry-Seal" that's sort of like a thin layer of asphalt that resurfaces while filling cracks and voids.

If you get it quick it doesn't have time to sink

into the paint and stain the finish. Hopefully you got to it and I know from personal experience that nothing better than Dupont exists to do this job. I regularly use it to take off all the little spots from summer road trips to prevent from hardening and leaving brown marks. Another reason to make sure you've got a protective coat of wax on.

You could probably sue and win in small claims court if you knew where this came from. You have a reasonable expectation that the municipalities maintain roads in a condition that won't do damage to your car. Good luck proving where it came from tho. And you'd be hard pressed to put a $ amount on this after you've already done the work. And now you'd have to have great photos to document the damage.

I don't think so.

Obviously, this type of thing would vary from state to state, and even from municipality to municipality within state. But here, we have some very generous local governments who regularly step up to the plate to cover things like bent wheels from pot holes and such things as that; much more quickly than I've heard stories of from people in other states. However I can assure you they (city/county/etc) wouldn't even consider reimbursement for tar removal, and more than they'd consider reimbursement for damages for running over a speed bump at too high a speed. Cities and counties have every right to do regular maintenance, in fact it's one of the things the tax revenue goes towards and as citizens, we expect.

The only responsibility, and it's more of a courtesy than law, would be for signs to be up warning of fresh surface.